Working for coins

When the world and I were younger than they are now there came a time in my life when my father decided that I should work for coins, I don't know what prompted him to this momentous decision because its not like he ever gave me any pocket money or anything, but he decided one day that it was about time I was out there in the wide world and working for my weekly coins.

I was five years old at the time.

I kid you, I was six.

No actually I was about fourteen years old, had no requirement for coin, went nowhere that needed coin, my playground were the fields at the end of the road, my shopping mall was the cricket field where we played football all day long to the extreme annoyance of the cricketers, my requirement for refreshment was quenched in the beck that ran clear as crystal (most of the time) (ok we never checked), through the playing fields of our youth.

But still, he sent me out to work.

I went to work for my Uncle Ralph at the world famous Headingley Rugby and Cricket ground, selling programmes at the rugby and scorecards at the cricket initially, then working the dozens of bars in the ground when I got older, I was never paid along with all of the other workers by my Uncle Ralph for he always told me to "come back later when the rush has gone", and I did, he paid me in coins, scant few coins, I suspect that my dad took a cut from my wage, but I had no need for coins, I still don't, I'm like the Queen, I don't carry cash at all, haven't had any cash in my pocket for months, sure its embarrassing sometimes when you can't pay the parking meter but you'd be surprised how long you can abandon a car in a no parking zone for before someone tows it.

And so the time came all too soon for my own daughter to learn that out here in the real world we have to sell ourselves in a commercial world to the highest bidder, or sometimes just be grateful that there's only one bidder.

As a university student she absorbs money like a sponge, on the rare occasions that I am to be found with money on my body it does not stay attached to me for long, I empty my pockets when I walk in the door and thats the last time I see it as its usually completely by coincidence that on those days she has an important student meeting to go to that evening and she comes home in the early hours of the next day and throws up my money into the toilet before declaring "never again" and going to bed, my money is converted into cheap wine quite easily it seems.

So she's had a few different jobs but the one she has now is by far the most ridiculous - she is a call centre questionnaire-ee.

She is one of those annoying people who ring you up just before you are about to sit down with your evening meal with the question "Would you mind taking part in our ten minute survey ?" and by her own confession most of them hang up after she has kept them answering questions for twenty minutes.

Who invents these surveys ?

Fekkwits thats who.

She sits at a computer screen not knowing which question is coming up next and not knowing how many more questions are coming, they are randomly generated on behalf of an anonymous customer who presumably thinks that ringing people at home and annoying them for half an hour on the phone is a genuine and sensible way to garner public opinion on their anonymous product, because of course the call centre workers aren't allowed to submit responses such as "why don't you go fuck yourself", in fact they aren't allowed to submit any survey unless the computer says that all of the questions have been answered and she often sits there for four hours and doesn't reach the end of any questionnaire - finish four in a night and you are a gold star champion of the telephone.

So the next time that someone rings from a call centre with a request to carry out a survey then put aside forty minutes of your life and agree to answer whatever it is they require of you - just give the stupid answers thats all, just to piss off the end user client, just so that somewhere, someday, in a glass corporate tower somewhere, some marketing twat will stand up to address the board of directors with the astounding finding that 8 our of 10 customers prefer beef gravy on their corn flakes in a morning and that 9 out of 10 young mothers prefer to wipe their babies bottoms with a number 3 coarse sandpaper.

Only then will the curse of the call centre cease to be a valid tool, only then will my daughter be able to find more productive employment, like selling programmes at Headingley for instance, it was good enough for me...

Tecumseh Valley

Blagging from Norman Rockwell

Aren't libraries great ?

Was at my newly rebuilt local one on Saturday on my regular three weekly top up of reading material when, on the way out I spotted a greet big book on the life and work of one of America's finest and most under-appreciated (at least during his lifetime) artists Norman Rockwell - his official website is here.

Most well know for his front covers of The Saturday Evening Post which he produced a total of 321 paintings for from 1916 to 1963, a quite remarkable and unequaled record, during which his work ranged from cartoon style portrayals of a small town American lifestyle to vivid and beautifully painted anti-apartheid and anti-war works of art - have a look at the gallery on this page and click the picture of the small black girl being taken to school by four FBI agents (bottom row second from left)

While on that same link also click the picture on the bottom right hand corner for an LS Lowry style painting of a crowd of people passing a cathedral entrance - a beautifully detailed building contrasting with the almost cartoon like but very effective handling of the people.

Mention "Rockwell" to most people though and they will think of the small-town SEP front covers which recorded a way of life that possibly didn't even exist but which most people wish we could return to, click this link for lots of examples, realistic and cartoon-like depictions of everyday life situations - a massive volume of work and an invaluable historical collection.


So having lost (and then re-found) my old art pen at christmas I dashed off to my local art shop and bought a crappy old dip pen with a split nib and a bottle of black ink and I've been doodling and blotching ever since, and since saturday have been blagging subjects out of the Norman Rockwell book, faces with so much detail and expression painted into them that you can almost talk to the old men and women in Rockwells picture.

My interpretations of his subjects are so far away from his finesse that I'd defy you to pick out the originals in the book, but they're fun to do, sometimes only taking a few minutes, sometimes 30 mins to an hour and the crappy old pen that keeps blotting is a deliberate tool - when you use architects pens that are guaranteed not to blotch but deliver ink in a uniform way then you lose spontaneity - Ralph Steadman web site once bought the entire stock of his favourite crappy nib when he learned that the company making them was ceasing production.


So the only question remaining now is - should I migrate to Wordpress (or somewhere else) to get a bit more control over the appearance of this blog ?

In the meantime...

Gay George...

Gay George was my dads uncle, one of several siblings of Percy, my dads father, I knew none of them and only became aware of Gay George when I had reached adulthood and had taken out a mortgage, the local agents for whom turned out to be a well known estate agent and chartered surveyors - Gay George was a well respected director of said estate agent and chartered surveyor.

I met him once when he just happened to be working in our local branch one Saturday morning - remember the days when you used to go to a branch to pay your mortgage in cash - and I handed the payment book over the counter to a very pleasant old man who perused the book, noticed my name and remarked that we had the same surname and initial.

I'd heard of him and knew that he was a director of the company and so told him who my father was, his face lit up and we spent the rest of the morning in idle chatter about the nieces and nephews that he'd never kept in touch with.

I didn't mention that my dad always referred to him as "Gay George" though.

No-one really knew whether he was gay or not, its just that he was the only one out of eight siblings who never married, or who never seemed to find a space in his life for a female companion, in those far distant days such behaviour was all the evidence required to be labeled as "queer" and as the label "gay" came to replace "queer" then "gay" and "george" just seemed to fit hand in glove.

I inherited two things from him.

A couple of years after I had met him in his estate agents branch office (and I was always treated with more respect there after I had met him than before, being related to "Mr George" had its advantages), my dad took a phone call to say that Gay George had died and after his funeral would he like to go to the house where there was a grandfather clock waiting for us to collect, it being willed to our dad as Gay George knew he was still in the clock business.

I went down to the house with our dad in the van one evening after work.

Gay George had a nice detached bungalow in a quiet suburb of Leeds, not ostentatious at all, it didn't scream out "money" and I suspect that Gay George had hoarded a lot of cash in his estate agency rather than spend it on a lifestyle, but still, it was a nice bungalow.

We were shown into the now almost empty house by a woman who introduced herself as Gay Georges housekeeper and shown into the living room where the "grandfather clock" stood in the corner.

I'd been expecting to find an antique, something that could be flogged off for several hundred pounds, something worth dragging me out there in the van for.

Instead we found a homemade imitation "grandfather" clock which exhibited no trace of fine workmanship in its manufacture and upon opening it displayed the interior of an old time recorder rather than an ancient precision timepiece.

But our dad was delighted, for he recognised the clock, as he should because it was his father who had made it. In the 1920's he'd taken the carcass of an old spring wound time recorder with its short pendulum and encased it in what was an empty case to make it look like a grandfather clock - it had stood in the corner of their family wooden house when our dad was a child and then somehow found its way into Gay Georges lineage.

It smelled musty, it was ugly and worthless, cruelly if my grandad hadn't canabilised a 1920's wood cased spring wound time recorder but had instead hung said time recorder on his wall then we'd now be looking at something worth several hundred pounds, as it stood, it was firewood, nothing more.

Our dad took it and put it in his garage, from whence it eventually found its way into my garage and then eventually it found its way into our workshop at the office - Ned and me chopped it up and threw it in a skip last year.

But there was something else in Gay Georges house that attracted our dads attention and he asked the housekeeper if she had any idea what was going to happen to the old radiogram in the corner, "you can have it" she replied, "all the good stuffs already gone" she continued in a tone that left us in no doubt that there had been no "good stuff" left in the will for her.

Christ knows why he wanted the old radiogram but we took it and its huge extra speaker case as well, our dad told me it would be worth a bob or two as it was one of the first radiograms to grace these shores and that it was made of solid mahogany "its got a lovely sheen on it" he told me, I thought it was an ugly monstrosity and I knew for sure that our mum would not let it grace their front room.

I was right, the next morning he arrived at the office with it and there it lived for several years with him polishing it once a week to keep "this lovely sheen" on the mahogany case, "its solid mahogany this you know" he'd expertly tell us once a week.

One unusual thing about the radiogram was that it had the shop receipt issued to Gay George in 1961 when he had bought it and like the building society pass book the receipt was made out to someone with my initial and surname - I did suggest that perhaps I could take it back to the shop 30 years after its original purchase and see if they'd give us the thirty guineas back, but our dad wouldn't hear of it.

Eventually we moved from those offices and as part of a big clearout I eventually persuaded him to get rid of the radiogram that didn't work but "had a lovely sheen", he was heartbroken and wouldn't hear of us throwing it in a skip somewhere but after I promised to take it to a second hand furniture shop and get the best possible price for it he relented and bade it farewell.

I took one of the lads out of the workshop and we took it straight to the council rubbish tip where they had a nice big yellow crushing machine just for this sort of disposal problem, dropping the huge radiogram in the crusher took some doing and we had to enlist two of the council workmen to help us and when it was in there they pressed the button for the big ramming thingy to start closing in on the fine piece of 1960's audio/furniture - a time long past when you couldn't just have a record player, it had to look like furniture too.

When the crusher hit the radiogram there was a huge crack and all of us instinctively ducked as splinters of wood flew from the bowels of the machine, on closer inspection these were revealed to be cheap plywood with the thinest of mahogany veneers.

I laughed all the way back to the office at the thought of Gay George and our dad polishing plywood furniture for all of those years, and of course I had to tell him when I got back to the office, he wasn't amused at all, not at the plywood revelation but the fact that I hadn't taken it to a second hand furniture shop and flogged it off as solid mahogany as promised...

The Pub in my Family

Once upon a time our family had a pub in it, quite a big pub actually, its still there, The White Stag at Sheepscar in Leeds.

One of my fathers Uncles was the landlord, his Uncle Lenny, who had inherited the pub from his father George, I have the Census returns for the late 1800's which show their family as "publicans", a family of eight kids ranged over 25 years all living in the pub together at one point, as I said, its a big pub.

Family folklore has the story that my fathers father, Percy, contested the will when their father George died and that he and his brother Lenny played a game of cards for the right to own the pub, my grandfather Percy lost and our side of the family mooched off up Meanwood Road and opened a clock repair shop instead, hence the reason why we are still (sort of) in the clock business now (its only sort of, I can't repair clocks, don't ask me to).

Incidently there was another George in the equation, another brother of Percy and Lenny, I only mention him here to remind myself to tell his story sometime soon, he was known as Gay George and didn't want the rights to the pub as he was studying surveying at the time and eventually became a director of a very well known Leeds based company of Chartered Surveyors - like the pub, Gay George's fortune did not make its way down our side of the family tree when he died.

What ?

Yes, he was known as Gay George for precisely that reason.

So my Great-Grandfather George is running the pub in the first half of the last century and like a lot of publicans of that time he brews his own beer in a huge wooden vat in the cellar, a tap at the bottom of the vat allows him to fill a barrel with beer as and when needed and when the vat is empty he brews another load - as with all self-brewers there is no quality control over the ale other than Great-Grandad George's own knowledge and palete and of course the last barrel taken from the vat is always going to be stronger than the first barrel being that its fermenting all the time its in there.

A pub landlord in those days kept his clientele happy by the quality of his brew and they soon told him if he'd made a bad brew, unfortunately there was nothing else to do but drink the bloody lot as quick as you could if you had a bad brew because you'd have to empty the vat first in order to start again - on the other hand if you had a particularly good brew then word got around and you sold out pretty quickly that week.

One such good brew occured without any sort of rational explanation one week, George couldn't work out just exactly what it was that he'd done different this time but all his customers agreed that this one was a particularly delightful brew, stronger, with a much deeper flavour, very tasty indeed, mmm, give us another pint George.

The only disappointing thing for George was that he didn't know whether he could repeat the process when it came time to re-brew another batch but he did his best to ensure that his suppliers sent him the same hops, yeast and other good stuff that goes into the vat.

In no time at all they were down to the last couple of barrels and with an empty vat George prepared his ingredients for another fresh brew, placing a stepladder next to the huge wooden tub he climbed up and removed the lid ready to clean out the dregs...

...and it was then that he discovered what had happened to the family cat which had been missing these past few days.

Yes, it had drowned in his last brew.

He never knew whether it was the cat that was the vital ingredient that made the beer taste so strong.

But from then on he always threw one into the vat just before he closed the lid on a new brew.

DISCLAIMER - The last line of this story may not be strictly true

Hot Tips for Pop Pickers in 2008

OK, this might not go very well.

I did this last year but I actually snuck all the band names from Napster's 2007 "Tips for the Hot Bands of 2007" and by the end of that year all of the bands on the Napster list were still drifting out there in obscurity somewhere.

So this time I will steal my list of hot tips from somewhere else...

1. Duffy - the PR blurb for this bint tells me that she is the next Dusty Springfield to which I ponder, "does the world really need another Dusty Springfield". She certainly looks like Dusty Springfield but I would have thought that modelling yourself on a singer who, lets be honest, wasn't really that popular in her heyday - ok so she sold out The Cats Whiskers in Meanwood but then again so did Max Jaffa and his Orchestra - is not a masterplan to instant success, especially if you have to wait to die and be adopted by the gay community to make a name for yourself.

Her Myspace site is right here and has some sample tracks and there is a feature on her on The First Post right here with a full length video of her which quite frankly I can't stand.

My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? No
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Two
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? A small child pestering their mother for sweets at a supermarket checkout


OK, I'm blagging off Napster again now...

2. Laura Marling - You see this is more like it, I've only played the 30 second preview of one of her songs on Napster Light (I accidentaly unsubscribed myself last month and haven't got round to sending my credit card details back to them) and I already want to hear more. Classified as "Female Folk" or "Easy Listening" she also has a Myspace site right here with some right folky stuff on it - stick one finger in your ear, grab a pint of Theakstons and hum along.

My ratings ...
Could I listen to a full CD of hers ? Probably, I'd give it a go anyway
How quickly would I eject said CD of hers ? Track Four
Who/What does her voice remind you of ? Suzanne Vega, maybe, sometimes.

3. Beth Rowley - In a very similar vein (sometimes) to Lily Allen but this one can actually sing and hold a note and leave you feeling like you've listened to serious music instead of Ed "Stewpot" Stewart's Junior Choice - Myspace site right here

My ratings ...
Yes
Is very easy on the eye too.

4. Jack McManus - Sounds like every other solo male performer at the moment in the same way that the above three female solo artists all sound like every other solo female artist, but thats not necessarily a bad thing if the quality is good although it makes you wonder where the music business is going at the moment - anywhere but into the hands of messrs Cowell and Walsh, please god.

My ratings...
Is he any good ? Sounds OK
Will you be gloating in Jan 2009 at having tipped him for fame ? I doubt it.



On a slightly related topic, I have used Napster's £9.99 a month unlimited streaming service for several years now and it became our households jukebox with the three (the wife doesn't count when we speak of technology) of us having a PC with access to it we didn't buy a CD at all for two years.

Then just before christmas in a fit of curiosity I downloaded Winamp to use as an alternative media player, its OK, nothing more, but it did offer me the bargain of the year in a service called eMusic where, for £8 a month I could download 30 tracks, and better still I could have 50 free tracks just for signing up.

I signed up, I let the Napster account lapse, Napster converted me to their "light" user status which means I only get previews now, not to worry I thought, I now have eMusic for my downloading delight each month.

eMusic is complete shite.

eMusic boasts of having billions of tracks just ready and waiting for your musical delight, it may have millions, but it doesn't have any of the ones you want to listen to - if you are into obscure artists or recordings of you favourite artist that you'd wish they'd never recorded, you know, the ones that get dropped off the album and are then released ten years later as "extra material never before heard" (theres a reason why they were never heard before) then eMusic is for you - it specialises in shite music that no-one wants to listen to and specialises in not having the music that you do want to listen to.

I have cancelled my subscription to eMusic after managing to snaffle 40 of my 50 free downloads (I've tried but just cannot find those last ten tracks anywhere on their site) and will get around to re-subscribing with Napster again any day soon.

Another Meanwood lad done good...

Barry Ryan and his twin brother Paul were a singing duo of 1960's vintage until Paul decided that teenage adulation was not his bag (fool) and turned to writing music for his brother to sing - Eloise was their biggest hit together in 1968.

The Ryans (or Saphersons to use their real names) were from Meanwood and my dad never tired of telling anyone and everyone that when they were young lads putting their act together they used the concert room at his local club for rehearsals, a story which stood him in good stead when we visited France for our extremely adventurous holiday in 1971 as for some fluke of pop history the song "Eloise" had been a massive hit in France and Barry Ryan can still be seen performing on various French TV stations to this very day.

Working Mens Clubs were extremely important to our dad, he was a trustee at Meanwood Con Club and had various stints as concert secretary, snooker and billiards ace and bingo caller under his belt, but nothing was as sacred to him as the traditional "turn" on a Saturday night, the only night of the week that the concert room would be used, and it would be packed out with couples, it being the only night of the week that men would take their womenfolk out with them.

Acts like the Ryan twins cut their performing teeth on the stage in working mens clubs, if you were rubbish you were paid off after your first session (generally "turns" did two or three 30 minute sets per night), if the audience hadn't started talking or going to the bar during either of your sets then you might get a rebooking for next year - but the good "turns" could easily double their "day job" weekly wages just by performing every Saturday and Sunday night in a random club somewhere on the northern circuit so repeat bookings for next year (marked down in the concert secretary's little black diary) were very important.

Our dad also claims responsibility for discovering another Meanwood act at his club, "The Grumbleweeds" and I must admit to being split between them and Barry Ryan for todays video choice - Barry Ryan will do my street cred much more, well, cred, though.

He also lays claim to a lad named Alan Hawkshaw who allegedly used to sneak into the concert room and tinkle on the organ when no-one was looking, a disgusting habit but it paid off - yes I know you won't have heard of him but you will have heard of his music for Mr Hawkshaw moved off to that there London as a young talented organist and started writing theme tunes for TV shows - at one point in the 1970's every TV show theme on TV had been written by Alan Hawkshaw, if only he'd made sure that his contract included royalties...

But our dads biggest claim to "discovering" new talent was the day that his boss at work rang him up to ask if he knew of a good northern comedian who could do a very short five minute spot at the Royal Albert Hall in that there London at the very prestigious and televised Burma Star Organisation's annual piss-up - our dad recommended Paul Shane.

"What !!!" you cry, "Paul Shane of Hi-de-Hi fame ?"
"Yes" I reply smugly
"He was shit comedy actor" you all shout back, in unison.

And yes I agree, his comedy acting talent was zero although as we all know to our cost, that did not stop him from starring in the BBC's most popular sitcom for several years (and then some more that were not popular at all), but Paul Shane was one of the big stars on the northen club stand-up comedian circuit - if you booked Paul Shane at your club you had to pay top whack even before he appeared on TV, but you knew that your club would be full that night - without a doubt he was one of the funniest stand-up comedians I have ever seen.

Such a shame that his acting ability was zero.

So there you are - famous club turns and Barry Ryan - check out the Grumbleweeds on YouTube though, you will either love them or you will think that I have lost any marbles that I ever owned for recommending them.


PS - Barry Ryan perfectly demonstrates the dance style known as "Your dad dancing at a wedding", how I wish it was fashionable again for I could take to the dancefloors once again without shame or ten pints of ale inside me...

When your Hi-Fi starts calling your name...

My father was not a man to throw his money around willy-nilly and so the day that he announced that he had replaced his old "music centre" (which he had naturally bought second hand) with a brand new state-of-the-art Aiwa Hi-Fi caused eyebrows to be raised within the JerryChicken household.

He had bought the smaller model of the one that I already had from, of all places, a furniture store - if you have ever wondered who on earth is ever tempted to buy electrical goods from a furniture store then the answer is people like our dad on his once in a lifetime fecklessness trip.

A few days later I was sat in my house when the phone rang...

"You've got an Aiwa system haven't you ?"
"Yes dad"
"How do you code your name into it ?"
"Eh ?"
"How do you code your name into it ?"
"Why would you want to do that ?"
"You have to code your name into it so that it shows your name on the screen when you switch it on"
"Don't be daft"
"You do"
"It shows your name on screen when you switch it on ?"
"Yes"
"Mine doesn't"
"Mine does, it says Geoff"
"Geoff ?"
"Yes, Geoff, I think its a second hand one, someone called Geoff has programmed his name in"
"What does the instruction book say"
"It says nothing, doesn't mention programming your name in"
"Well mine doesn't"
"Come around and have a look"

I was often ordered to "come around and have a look" when he couldn't work something out, I lost count of the amount of times I had to go and program his video recorder when he was going out somewhere.

I arrived at his house, he switched his new Hi-Fi on, sure enough it said "Geoff" on the LCD display.

"Its bloody second hand" he told me, a bit more annoyed now, "I'm taking it back, they've bloody conned me with a second hand stereo"
"Give me the instruction book"

I read the instructions from cover to cover, there was no mention of the function that allowed you to program your name into the system so that it welcomed you when you switched it on, no mention at all.

"You'll have to take it back then" I told him
"Bloody conning buggers" he muttered, "I'll bloody tell them, flogging a second hand stereo to me, how did this Geoff manage to programme his name in anyway ?"
"I don't know" I told him, "I can't see anywhere where you can do this"
"Bloody conning buggers"


It was some time later when I'd returned home that the penny dropped...

I rang him...

"Dad, has your stereo got a graphic equaliser ?"
"A what ?"
"A graphic equaliser"
"What do you mean ?"
"Does it say graphic equaliser anywhere in the instructions ?"
"Do you want me to look ?"
"Well, yes"
"Bloody hell"

I sat and waited on the phone while he rustled lots of paperwork around , then picked up the phone again...

"There's a chapter in the manual that says graphic equaliser, what is it ?"
"Its a posh way of saying Bass and Treble"
"Bloody hell"
"Does it say anything about switching the graphic equaliser on and off ?"
"Wait a minute while I go get my glasses"

I waited for more than a minute while he went to get his glasses and then read the instruction book.

"Yes it says theres a button round the back where you can switch the graphic equaliser on or off"
"Thats it then"
"Whats it then ?"
"Thats what its saying when you switch the Hi-Fi on"
"What, when it says Geoff ?"
"Yes, its not saying Geoff, its saying Graphic Equaliser Off"

There was a long pause, a very long pause.

"Bloody hell"

And he put the phone down.


I still think it would be a good idea to have your stereo welcome you by name though, his did as long as you were called Geoff.

Another Strange Neighbour

Apart from the nutty Mr Hall who spent all of his waking hours staring into our glass fronted living room and apart from the bone idle deaf couple next door, we had another strange neighbour at Wrenbury Avenue.

And here is where I will have to be careful, for he is still alive and easily identified, I've already identified the street where he lives, if I tell you his name is Mr Anthony Cook then I'll blow his identity completely.

So instead we will use the name that us cheeky young scamps used to call him by, Mr Puff, the word "puff" being a 1960's British vernacular for "homosexual", that being what we suspected Mr Puff of being to our 11 year old eyes and ears.

Mr Puff was a respected music teacher at a very respected senior boys school in the City of Leeds, in fact it would be fair to say that it was the most respected senior boys Grammer School in the City of Leeds, but for the same reasons that I can't tell you Mr Puff's real name I can't tell you the name of the school for some people would easily put two and two together and re-arrange the bold words in this sentence to make the name of the school where he worked, and that might get me into trouble, and Lord knows I have enough trouble within my own family without the lawyers from Leeds Grammer School to cope with as well.

Anyway, he's retired from there now so anyone with a son at the very prestigious and well respected educational establishment can relax and hope that they have tightened up on their employment procedures now.

You see Mr Puff liked to dress up in his spare time.
Actually thats not quite true, Mr Puff liked to invite young boys into his home in order for them to dress up.

"Weirdo !" I hear you exclaim.
"Well yes" I counteract, "but this was the 1960's and we young boys, I mean those young boys knew no better"

Oh bugger it, yes I admit, it was our gang that he used to invite into his home to dress up in, erm, unusual costumes.

You see he explained that as head of music at the very prestigious and very well respected seat of education in our fine city he also got to be involved with the dramatic society and their various productions, and with it being an all-boy very prestigious seat of education, the boys sometimes had to dress up as girls, so theres nothing that sounds too wrong about that then is there, it all makes perfect sense...

So we'd be playing football or rugby out on the street of a summers evening and suddenly Mr Puff's voice would call out from over the road asking if we'd all like a drink of orange, it being a warm summers evening and all, and what with a drink of orange being something of a luxury to us impoverished lads we'd gratefully accept, whispering to each other that we wouldn't actually go in his house this time...

Five minutes later one of us would be stood there in Mr Puffs kitchen dressed from head to toe in a rubber scuba divers outfit complete with marigold washing up gloves (as he'd lost the proper scuba divers gloves) - a scuba divers mask and snorkel completed the outfit - and then he'd take photographs of us...

Yes, yes, yes, stop laughing, we all know now that he was a pervert, don't you think that every time we gather together in pubs we talk about Mr Puff and wonder how the hell he's managed to avoid conviction all these years ? We know now that he was, how shall we say, strange, but in the 1960's he was just, how shall we say, a little eccentric with his holiday snaps.

It wasn't always the scuba divers outfit, although that one seemed to be ever-present, sometimes it was a sailors outfit (yes, I know...), and a motorcycle riders leather suit complete with helmet and marigold gloves (again) also made it onto several photographs, yes, yes, yes, its obvious with hindsight, lets just say you had to be there though.

Occasionally theatrical clothing from the very well respected all-boys Grammar School arrived back at his house and from this we deduced that nautical themed plays must have been very popular at said well respected all-boys school, matelot and admiral combinations seemed to be ever-present, maybe they spent a lot of time rehearsing HMS Pinafore or something.

He offered to teach me to play the piano for free and often invited me to sit on the piano stool with him while he showed me where to put my fingers, but our mum thought it was not such a good idea when I told her as we'd need to have a piano in our house to practice on and there was no room what with all the junk furniture we already had - or maybe our mum had her suspicions about Mr Puff all along.

We knew Mr Puff was a puff because he had a "gentleman friend" who called around for him on a weekend on his motorbike and off they'd roar, Mr Puff astride the pillion of the old Triumph clad in the very same all-leather motorcycle riders gear that he'd photographed us all in, even down to the yellow marigolds which he used to gather a good grip around the girth of his boyfriend, erm, gentleman friend on the bike.

30 years later was the last time we saw Mr Puff on the day that Ned and I spent clearing out our dads bungalow after he had died - I really must write of that day soon, it was hilarious - as we were getting in our car one of the neighbour's came out to express their condolences and then out of the corner of his mouth I heard Ned whisper "Mr Puffs here" and suddenly there he was right in front of the pair of us explaining that he too wished to express his condolences...

Neither of us could look him in the eye, nor could we look at each other, as Neds brother I know when he is on the verge of hilarity and he me too (does that make sense), we were dying to crack out laughing and ask for a glass of orange so we mumbled something about being in a hurry, jumped in the car and sped off leaving him to view our hysterical laughter in the rear view mirror - he must have thought that we had a very strange way of handling grief.

When Your Neighbours Are Deaf

We moved to Cookridge in 1964.

In those days our street was one of the very last ones in Leeds, walk to the end of our street, turn left and walk for a few minutes more and you were in fields, real countryside with farms and cows and things, its still pretty much the same.

The bungalow that our dad scrimped and saved for cost him £2300 in 1964, an extraordinary amount of money, most of which was borrowed from the Leeds and Holbeck Building Society, to give an idea of just how extraordinary an amount of money it was he always spoke of "the other bungalow" that they just missed out on buying and how glad he was that someone else got their deposit to the builder just twenty minutes before he did because that bungalow cost £2400 and our dad knew that he couldn't afford that extra £100.

We moved into the bungalow one November night in 1964 in the middle of one of the thickest fogs I have ever seen, so thick was the fog that you couldn't see the road at all from inside the car as our dad drove us up the big hill that Cookridge is perched on top of and it was fortuitous that we almost ran into the back of a bus which crawled up the long hill at 5mph as we could at least follow the weak rear lights and hope that the bus driver could see the road ahead.

The bungalow was of a daring new 1960's design with the whole of the front wall of the sitting room being one huge window facing out onto the concrete street and your opposite neighbours, every bungalow in the street was the same, this was cutting edge housing design, the new decade when our country had finally put the war years and the war debt behind us and was striving on with a brave new building plan, Leeds was becoming the "Motorway City of the North" as our local politicians liked to emphasis at every opportunity and glass fronted bungalows were hyper-cool, we would sit in our glass fronted bungalow wearing the latest in nylon clothing and plan our holidays on the moon according to the vision of the very near future that was presented to us at Wrenbury Avenue.

The very first evening as we sat in our glass fronted living room and pondered on the wisdom of sharing our family life with everyone who walked past the bungalow and our mother berated our father for not letting her buy some new nets and curtains for the ones she had brought from the last house were for a far shorter and narrower window and our father worriedly perused his building society savings book for nets and curtains for such an expanse of glass would indeed be extremely costly, we realised that the bungalow had two other slight, teensy-weansy built-in snags.

The first had been immediately apparent from the first minute that we arose on that first morning - the neighbour in the glass fronted bungalow opposite liked to spend all day long standing at his large front window staring straight across the road into our glass fronted bungalow.

When I say he had stood at his front window all day staring into our bungalow then that's exactly what I mean, a bald headed man who wore an old cardigan even on the warmest days and with a pipe constantly hanging out of the corner of his mouth John Hall (he would later introduce himself) had only one aim in his life - to stand at his window, arms folded behind his back, puffing at his pipe, staring into our bungalow.

Our dad tried shouting at him at first, shouting from inside our bungalow, surprisingly Mr Hall couldn't hear him being that two large panes of glass and thirty foot of road stood between them, so our dad motioned with an obscene gesture across the road to Mr Hall, inviting him to, erm, go away, Mr Hall appeared to misunderstand the obscene message and just waved back jauntily.

Eight hours later and it was our teatime and Mr Hall was still standing at his window staring into our house when our dad stormed across the road to berate him, it was then that his long-suffering wife explained that her husband was on long term sick from his civil service job having suffered a nervous breakdown some months earlier, in short Mr Hall was our local nutter and for the next twenty years we had to learn to ignore his constant observations from over the road.

The second snag became obvious as soon as our dad returned from the Hall residence over the road and the next-door neighbours turned on their TV set for the night - their TV set was so loud that we couldn't hear ours, at all.

Our dad had just sat down and started to recount the tale of Mr Hall the nervous nutter over the road when the blast of the Coronation Street theme tune made the cheap glassware in our china cabinet rattle in sympathy, our mum instantly jumped up and switched on our TV set without thinking - it was OK while we were watching the same channel as next door, we could have the sound on our set turned off completely and just listen to next doors and as our dad liked to observe, that was "saving our speakers" but we had to watch whatever they watched all night long or else we couldn't hear what was on our TV at all, and their taste in TV programmes was crap.

So for the second time on that first evening at Wrenbury Avenue our dad stormed out of the house again determined to give a neighbour hell over their objectionable behaviour.

He returned ten minutes later with a "I don't believe it" look on his face and the TV set next door blaring out just as loud - our next door neighbours were both stone deaf, deaf as doornails, well almost totally deaf, the wife could just barely hear something when the TV was turned up full and would explain to her husband what was happening, she promised to turn down the volume but for the next thirty years did not in fact do so - we learned to live with it.

In fact it turned out to be no bad thing having deaf next door neighbours for later on when our dad splashed out on a radiogram and we started buying the popular music of the 1960's we found that we could play our records as loudly as we liked, full volume so that neighbours way down the street would stand out in the street and wonder where the hell that racket was coming from but our next door neighbours never heard a word - or at least that was the theory for our mother would always put a stop to our high volume antics by insisting that we turn down the radiogram "before we all went deaf" and despite our inarguable factual argument that it didn't matter as the neighbours were already bloody deaf, she always won despite not actually knowing which of the knobs on the radiogram was the volume one - our mum and technology were not happy bedfellows.


More on the deaf neighbours some other time for they are a rich source of anecdotes, what with him being the laziest bastard in the known universe and all...

PS - there is a 1960's photo of the Wrenbury Avenue bungalow on the, erm, photo bit to the right...

What are they doing in there ?

There is a Tom Wait song called "What is he building in there ?" who's lyrics involve someone wondering what the hell a neighbour does every night when all he can hear is nails banging, the occasional soft moan and the fact that he is seen some nights on the rooftop signalling to someone with a flashlight.

Well, I have a similar question of something that is omnipresent in shopping malls now...

War Game shops, or Role Playing shops as they sometimes refer to themselves...

What are they doing in there ?

You will have seen them, of that I am sure, you may not recognise that you have seen them for your first human instinct will have been to glance quickly into their open fronted interior, immediately register "geek", and walk on.

But think hard and you will recall those small shopping mall outlets, usually towards the periphery of the mall where units are cheaper to rent, a minimum of spend has been made on the interior where the walls are simply lined with shelves so that the maximum spend can be made on the hand painted sign above the frontage - it usually resembles something that a year 11 art student would have done given unlimited quantities of primary poster colours and involves non-human characters dismembering each other with ray guns or huge scimitars - those shop signs are a science fiction geeks nirvana.

But don't hurry away, stand across the aisle of the mall at a safe distance and observe what is going on inside the shop.

Nothing is going on inside the shop, that's what is going on inside the shop, nothing.

And yet the shop is full of people.

When I say people I mean the male of the species for rarely is a female to be seen anywhere near an outlet that does not retail clothes, and these Role Playing shops do not retail clothes, or at least if they do they won't be the sort of clothes that you'd want to wear for that golf club function you've been invited to next month, you know, the one where you simply must have a new outfit but you just can't think what it is you're looking for yet.

You do occasionally see a woman loitering outside the shop signalling frantically to some bespectacled spot-ridden-face youth as its time for their bus, the youth will be doing his damnest to ignore his mother while the other shop inhabitants will be smirking behind their hands at him, relieved that its not yet their turn for their mum to come for them.

And yet don't let me mislead you that these outlets are full of spot-faced youths who's mums leave them there while they shop, this is not even predominantly the case, these outlets are more often filled with obese middle-aged men who all bear a remarkable resemblance to a grown-up version of the Milky Bar kid, a Milky Bar kid who believed too much in his products nutritional benefits, and its these men too who check the shop frontage for the signal from their mother to pick up their big leather shopping holdall and accompany her to the bus.

The War Game or Role Playing outlet is usually crowded with spot-faced youths and wobbling 40 year old Milky Bar kids, but none of them seem to buy anything and none of them seem to browse the shelves, instead they all simply gather around a large table in the centre of the store and stare at the little soldier models laid out there.

Occasionally one will reach out and move one of the little soldier models to another position on the table and then there will be a general glancing around, a rubbing of chins, a nodding approval of heads, and then the room settles down to stare at the board for a bit longer.

Its one of my New Years resolutions to discover exactly what these shops are all about for I see no visible evidence of any retail activity at all which of course begs the question "How do they pay the store rent" and "What are they doing in there ?"

In my research, and in a Pete Townsend stylee I will claim that this was all done in the interests of research when the police call, I have uncovered several of these "Role Playing" or "War Gaming" webs sites where a person could buy whole armies of small plastic soldiers, humanoid or otherwise, and my best guess is that the spot-faced youths and elderly Milky Bar kids do this and then take their little soldiers down to the shopping mall to fight with them every Saturday.

I say best guess because that s what it is , its my best guess, I really haven't a clue what they are doing in there, but I base my best guess on what me and Ned used to do with our little plastic soldiers when we were small children, although it has to be said that our War or Role Playing games usually ended up with one or both of the armies perishing in a huge ball of fire caused by the easy accessibility we had to cans of Ronsonite lighter fluid and a box of matches, I have yet to see one of the shopping mall outlets be engulfed by a lighter fluid inspired inferno, but on the other hand I haven't really observed them properly yet.

2008, the year of investigation, first target Role Playing Shops - What are they doing in there ?

A review of 2007 in the JerryChicken household

A year of upheaval, a year of change, a year of weddings and (so far) no deaths and (so far) no births, a year in which the strops got longer so that they are almost joined up in the middle now, a year in which I discovered a new solo holiday venue and a year in which I had presents thrown back in my face - and (eventually) a year in which I was bought my first ever dressing gown, I am now officially middle-aged, I look forward to a pipe and a bag of baccy.

January started off all political-like in the JerryChicken blog with lots of politicians being held up for ridicule by yours truly, well its what they get paid for and when the Home Secretary (who wasn't Home Secretary for long afterwards) calls the Home Office "Not fit for purpose" then he appears to be agreeing with me that they are all a right set of wankers in Westminster, so nothing changes there then.

The highlight of my January effort though was my predictions for the British music scene, which can be found right here. I am now free to freely admit that I blagged that list of hot tips straight from Napsters own list of hot tips and I freely admit that I knew of none of their names even while I typed the list, and I now freely admit that I still know of none of their names one year on, that would be the year in which they were tipped to do big things, in other words Napster's tippers spoke bollacks last year.

February was starting to get exciting, for February was the month in which we signed the contract to sell our old house and buy the new, but significantly smaller, house that we now inhabit and for the consideration of almost £10,000 in legal and taxation expenses we were almost packed and ready to go. February was the month when the dear old ladies at the Cancer Research Charity Shop in Horsforth had to go out and hire a small warehouse as a temporary storage facility after we bombarded them day after day with years worth of our accumulated junk, I drove past their shop just the other day and they are still selling old stuff of ours in the window, they have years worth of stock now.

February was also the month in which I went rally driving having been persuaded to part with an extortionate amount of money by our Ned in order to do so. Twas much fun, let down only by the fact that the other nine people on the rally driving course seemed to have come prepared with proper footwear and I had not - do you know how much of a twat you look clad in a fireproof racing suit and helmet with a pair of brown street shoes on ?

A big twat is the correct answer.

However I must have done something right for I finished third on the course ahead of all the young twats in their proper footwear who thought they could drive fast - well you can't, so there - one of said young twats being a petrolhead of my acquaintance who races his Honda veryfastsportscar on proper racing tracks and everything - sorry Richie, I haven't mentioned this before, but you drove like an old woman and I beat you by several minutes and thirty years.

March started with the house move, a day which went remarkably hassle free, perhaps it was because we only moved five hundred yards up the road or perhaps it was because it was our seventh move of our married life, or perhaps it was the fact that this time we paid £800 to four big strapping young lads to come from Whites Removals and do the whole job for us - I think it was the latter .

For anyone else considering a house move then please listen to me now - pay someone to do it for you.

I've moved myself, me and a hired van, for the other six house moves - disaster is always just thirty seconds around the corner waiting for you when you do it yourself - when you pay some big strapping lads to do it for you then the potential disaster is their problem and you just sit their on a box in the middle of your empty house and keep asking them if they want some more tea and biscuits, its dead easy.

March was also the month in which I went to Newcastle on Andy's stag weekend and partook of the noble art of Karting where one thing became immediately apparent when we were split into pairs and set off on a 30 minute grand prix race against each other - the team with the two skinny lads in had a significant advantage over the rest of us, weight being an issue in a motorised go-kart - furthermore I only overtook one other person during my sessions on the track and it is noteworthy that he was the only other person who was wearing a 3XL racing suit.

The seeds of doubt over my weight were sown on that day.

April was the month of the great mobile pond disaster, the post that got the most number of hits last year was "Dude, wheres my pond ?" after my magnificent Koi pond erection decided to go walkabout all the way down my garden, my drive, the street outside my house and the street at the bottom of this street, and onwards to the horizon, in short my new pond collapsed due in the main to faulty nails.

OK, so I shouldn't have used nails at all, and after I'd actually listened to a builder the next time, it worked fine, so the moral of the story is always seek professional advice, or something like that.

The knock-on effect of losing almost a thousand gallons of water down the street and causing the new neighbours to lock their doors and seek refuge on upper floors of their houses was that my project to build a conservatory on this new house has been shelved until I can demonstrate that I am capable and proficient at this stupid building lark to do it in a safe way where it will remain standing for longer than the ten minutes that the first pond did.

May was the month that I sold the family business for the princely sum of £3 rather than have HM Customs and Revenue walk in any day soon and tell me that they owned the place now.

Running your own business, the business that your grandfather started back in the 1920's can be fun, you get to pay yourself whatever you want, you get to take off any days you don't want to work, no-one tells you what to do, you please yourself, all of the time.

Except of course its nothing like that, what really happens is that you get to pay yourself after yoru customers have paid you and after you have paid your employees and you have paid your suppliers and after you have paid the last six months tax bills and after you have paid the last two quarters VAT bills, thats when you get paid, and when you pay yourself what is left your wife nags you because she doesn't think its enough money for the fact that youve not been at home at all for the last twelve years, and she's right because if you divided it up by an hourly rate you're actually paying yourself less then the minimum wage, far less than what you've just paid your 18 year old apprentice.

And when you reach the point where your accountant starts ripping you off with increasing bills for work which you can't remember authorising, and when you get to be on first name terms (as I did) with the Inland Revenue bailiffs - then is the time that you start to wonder whether collecting trolleys in the car park at Asda would be a good career move - and when you tell yourself that yes, that would indeed be a good career move, then you know that its time to fuck off, sell up and move on.

So I did.
I just own 10% now, just do sales now, I love it.
May was a good month then.

June brought rain, deluges of biblical proportions and thoughts turned to summer holidays of which there would be none for the JerryChicken household, us being skint from the house move and all, but I booked a few days in Edinburgh for three of us ...

July and the decking was finally finished at great expense and I finally decided to buy a black car, although the make was yet to be decided upon, and in the long run the new car was not black at all but a sort of grey colour. We started the first of our school summer holiday family days out with a trip to York, shopping and a visit to York Minster where a shock awaited to find that you had to bloody well pay to get in - pay to get in a church, whatever next ?

August and the glorious four days at Edinburgh Festival, what fun I had on my own there after the current Mrs JerryChicken and younger daughter had decided that they did not wish to spend four days of culture vulturing with me, so I left them at home and took all the money to Edinburgh - what a truly wonderful three week event that is and one which I will certainly be rebooking for next year , hopefully I'll get to do it on my own again, that was most of the fun.

September was the month when Northern Rock investors wanted their money back and Golden Brown shat his kecks at the sight of the queues outside their branches, so I wrote of my one and only experience of a savings scheme, the one where I beat the tricksters this time.

It was also the month when my wife demonstrated why women should not be allowed at sporting grounds and how it all used to work perfectly fine when it was just men and boys that were allowed through the turnstiles.

And I spoke of the day I met Elvis.

October was the month when I went and searched for my maternal grandmothers grave, and found it accidentally, and there was lots of talk of purchasing clothing in preparation for the showbiz wedding that we were invited to, and of course I spoke of my childhood dream of being a top scientist, an ambition thwarted by the boy who blew a hole in his stomach, "this big" (holds fist up), he has not come forward yet after publication so I still cannot verify the truth of the old wives tale.

November was the month of the podcast, the month in which I rediscovered my yearning to be a disc jockey in true Tony Blackburn stylee, a yearning not backed up by talent unfortunately.

We discussed at length the Magic Razor Comb of Death and discovered that it was a feared phenomenon in the USA too, ripping childrens scalps being high on the parental agenda in the 1970's and Dennis our Tuorettes service engineer made another appearance with his untimely comments at a funeral.

December is almost done, tonight will be spent seeing off the 2007 year and welcoming 2008, a procedure which is highly choreographed in our family being as Suzanne comes from the North East, an area reknown for its voracity in celebrating the New Year Eve - personally I'd be in bed by 10pm but she's upset if she has to go to bed by 10am on 1st Jan.

So tonight I will once again be "First Foot" and at 11.55pm will be evicted from the friends house that we have all gathered at with a glass of whisky and a lump of coal (don't ask why) with instructions not to re-enter until invited to. At the stroke of midnight I will be stood outside int he cold and rain with my nose pressed up against the window while the gathered friends inside hug and kiss each other for what seems like hours until someone remembers that they've locked me outside, at that point they may decide to let me in, on the other hand they may decide that it would be funnier not to let me in yet and I will starve and freeze to death outside.

It happens every year, I've been "first foot" for the past 27 years and yet I still bring no luck to anyones new year, being the most stupid one of the party means that I will be picked until I finally perish in a frozen lump on someones doorstep in the early hours of a January 1st...

Women and the demon vacuum cleaner

Its a well known though rarely commented upon factum that women have a pact with a demon when they switch on a vacuum cleaner.

When they "vac" or "hoover" (dependant on the noun of choice) they are involuntarily possessed by a devil who lives inside the dust bag of each vacuum cleaner until such a time as they switch the bloody thing off and put it back in its cupboard - I've even known Ewbanks to have this ability to turn mild mannered housewife's into raging lunatical care-noughts who will vac up anything left lying around on the floor.

As a child I lost count of the amount of lego and meccano that I lost up inside my mothers vacuum cleaner, as an adult I nearly lost a child up inside our vacuum cleaner as the current Mrs JerryChicken ran over the hand of our firstborn when she was a toddler, skinning the knuckles of said hand - "She got in the way" was the only explanation we received - she was possessed.

All of our furniture has battered legs at the same height as the vacuum cleaner rubber fenders, chairs, tables, settees that have stood in the same position in the same room for several years are rammed daily with the vacuum cleaner as if they had just jumped out suddenly into its path, Jake the dog is rightly terrified of losing his tail up inside the thing and flees whichever room is currently being "vacc'd", I've had the very socks sucked off my feet by her and her terrible machine and so now I flee the room with Jake and we sit together on the bottom step of the stairs, holding onto each other until its all over.

And its Jakes fault that we have to go through this terrible ordeal at least twice a day for Jakes long Retrievers hair and fluffy undercoat falls out constantly and she gets the vac out almost hourly to follow after him - you remember James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner and his promise of a lifetimes guarantee on his product ?

Well he lies, speaks with a forked tongue, Dysons last narry a year in our house, we've had dozens of them and they now lie with the ultimate ignomy of the vacuum cleaner, covered in dust, at the back of our garage whilst the latest one flogs it guts out sucking the very pile off our carpets twice, thrice a day, she's possessed when she holds the handle, grows horns when she kicks the button to start up the devils implement, grins manically as she swooshes around the room, woman and machine in perfect harmony seeking out small items to send to a cyclonic deathcamp.

My latest theory is that there is something in the pitch of the motor that lies in perfect corrolation with a womans hormonal vibes for I have yet to see a male be so possessed and so eager to do the "vacc-ing", to "do the vacc-ing" holds some sort of sexual gratification to the female and lets face it chaps, if getting your rocks off was as simple as "vacc-ing" then we'd be at it all day wouldn't we ?

Yup, I reckon thats it, we've long suspected that they only need us for farming our baby juices during their limited breeding cycle - that and providing half the excuse to get the vac out again...

While my Ukelele Gently Weeps

Jake Shimabukuro is the blokes name and no I haven't a clue who he is, whether he is a professional musician, plays in a band, plays for coins in a hat on a street or what.

But he can play a ukelele.
And he more than does justice to one of George Harrison's finest moments, many have tried but few have equalled the master, this comes very close.

Theres a better quality version of that video at http://www.ukuleledisco.com/jake plus some more of his stuff, who would have thunk it eh - a ukelele web site being cool ?

Its useful to know a plumber

Thats my interpretation of Becky, Bob Beck, plumber extraordinaire, dead these past twelve years and one of our dads lifelong best mates.

It was Bob Beck who was the inspiration for my as yet unfinished story The Tomato Dip, the story of a debonair plumber and cafe owner in the late 1960's, the subject matter is true for Becky did own a cafe for a short while as well as doing his plumbing work, and he was what was coyly termed in those days "a lady's man".

Boxing Day 1968 and Ned and I are lying in bed, thick woollen blankets pulled up to our earlobes for it was another cold frosty morning in the bungalow without the benefit of central heating, central heating being a thing that only the posh kids families could afford.

The procedure each morning was for us to wait, rolled up inside our blankets for our mum or our dad to get up first, rake out last nights cinders from the coke burning stove in the living room (the only room to have a source of heat), stack the stove up with more coke and then light the gas poker and leave it burning for ten minutes or so for the coke to take a good light of.

Now some of you will be asking of yourselves here and now, "wait a minute, he mentions gas, they had gas in the bungalow, why did they not have a gas fire, or even gas fired central heating ?" and you'd be right to ask such a question, truth is the thought never crossed our minds in those heady days of space exploration, formica and nylon goods, the bungalow had a coke burning stove in it when we moved in that you had to use a gas poker to light it with, and that's the way it stayed.

Until Boxing Day 1968.

The coke burning stove wasn't the end of the matter, oh no, behind the coke burning stove was a "back boiler" which put simply meant that in order to have hot water in the house the coke stove needed to be lit and burning, it sounds quaint and old fashioned now but laying in our beds wrapped up in several thick and heavy woollen blankets listening to our mum raking out the grate on Boxing Day 1968, wondering how long we could "give it" before it would be warm enough to venture into the living room from our beds, gazing at the bedroom window which was once again covered in a thick layer of frost - on the inside (I kid not) - it was anything but quaint, it was just bloody cold, again.

Our mum kneeled down to rake out the hearth, we heard her knees creak and kneel down and then we heard a gentle "sploosh" as she kneeled down and we also heard a "Oh Frank !" as she realised that she'd kneeled down in a pool of water in front of the hearth where there should not be a pool of water, she was lucky, if that pool of water had been in our bedroom she'd have been kneeling on ice.

Our dad got up to investigate and amid curses and words we had never heard uttered before we came to realise that something was the matter with our back boiler, specifically it was "bloody burst".

No hot water, no fire, a freezing cold holiday, no tradesmen to call on, 'twas going to be a miserable day in the JerryChicken household.

Or at least it would have been had our dads best mate not been Bob Beck the debonair plumber. Not being on the phone at that time our dad had to get himself dressed and drive to Becky's house, get him out of bed, wait for him to get washed in hot water (what a luxury that sounded like by now) and then follow our dad back home to confirm the fact that "your boiler is goosed Frank"

They set to removing the coke stove and back boiler, a not so inconsiderable task as the back boiler was cemented into the chimney breast and the deaf people who lived next door came around to see what all the hammering and deconstruction work was all about (yes they really were deaf next door, imagine living in the 1960's as a kid when it didn't matter how loud you had your music turned up - and still your mum made you "turn it down, its like bedlam in here").

By that afternoon they had not only removed the coke burner and back boiler but Bob had crawled under the floor and laid a gas pipe then driven back home to bring us a brand new second hand gas fire, luxury, heat at the flick of a switch, well, several flicks of a switch because the ignition was knackered which is why the previous owners had gotten rid of it (see also my post on the new second hand cooker last month) - but still, luxury, of sorts.


Bob Beck worked for cash and in the true spirit of all self employed tradesmen of the time Bob Beck's cash was his own affair, tax returns were few and far between and only completed upon final demand from the tax office and then never in complete truth.

Bob was no different to any self employed tradesman, he was loaded with cash, embarrassed with cash riches he had to eventually buy a safe and dig and cement it into the floor of his garage just to have somewhere to keep all of the undeclared income and when one year a tax inspector turned up at his house to ask why he had not completed a tax return for the last three years he blamed it on his accountant, a dwarf named Bruce, who when questioned by the same tax inspector blamed it on Bob as he'd done the accounts but Bob had thrown them in the bin without forwarding them to the tax office, Bruce was telling the truth, Bob was not, the taxman returned to Bob's house.

Three years worth of tax had to be paid in an instant, Bob asked for time but the taxman asked how much more time he thought he deserved given that he'd already had three years, Bob pleaded poverty but the taxman had seen the brand new bungalow with the Jaguar XJS parked outside and suggested that some asset selling might be in order.

Finally cornered with inescapable logic Bob went to the garage safe one morning and withdrew huge fistfulls of cash, counted out the amount demanded and drove his Jag down to the tax office to hand it over. The tax inspector received the money, checked the amount, gave a receipt and then bade Bob a friendly farewell.

But just as Bob reached for the office door handle the taxman used the classic line that appears in all those old Peter Falk "Columbo" tv movies, "Just one more thing..." he said, "...where did this cash come from ?"

It was a fair cop, after pleading poverty for months Bob had suddenly appeared with several thousand pounds worth of hard cash and he had to admit to having "a little bit stashed away" and in order to prevent a threatened police investigation he had to seccumb to a second tax office assesment and a subsequent demand for more cash a few weeks later.

Bruce the dwarf accountant was sacked the following day even though it was none of his doing.

The Scard-iest Dog In The World

I may have mentioned this before, in fact I have mentioned this before, but we share our abode with the scard-iest dog in the world.

Jake is a Golden Retriever, ok he's more white than golden but Golden Retriever is his breed and he has an impressive pedigree to prove it.

Golden Retrievers are gun dogs, that is their purpose, the reason for their breeding and we bought Jake from a proper, real-life gamekeeper, yes I thought gamekeepers only existed in Catherine Cookson novels too, but this was a real live gamekeeper living in a tiny cottage way up inside North Yorkshire, it took nearly an hour to drive to and find his humble abode on a large private estate there.

The gamekeeper had two pens of working dogs, some Retrievers and some Labradors, and he explained how they work both breeds out in the field, the Labradors being the best ground scenters and the Retrievers being the best air scenters, work both together and you'll get your shot-down game back every time.

Jake was a twelve week old pup in a cage with two of his sisters when we first saw him and the genuine gamekeeper explained that all of his brothers had been taken for gun dog training, he then showed us the family pedigree with Jakes father being a champion gundog, as was his grandfather and several other relations in the family tree.

It begged the obvious question, "Why is Jake not being trained as a gun dog then ?", so I asked the obvious question.

The obvious question had an obvious answer, "Because he is frightened of guns" the gamekeeper informed, "...but he will make an excellent pet dog..." he hurridly tagged on, "...because he is as soft as shite"

And indeed he is

So we are all sitting around the Christmas Day dinner table tucking into our turkey etc, and someone decides to pull a cracker - as crackers do it went off with a soft bang - and Jake scarpered out of the room

We didn't notice he'd gone at first and so continued pulling crackers until someone mentioned that he was not sitting at the end of the table waiting in vain for scraps as is his duty as a Retriever (they eat until they burst then eat some more), I found him in another room curled up and shivering on a settee - he is ten years old this year and he has never ever jumped onto a settee, he just knows its not the dog thing to do but he was terrified by the christmas crackers and something in his doggy head related the settee with a safe place

I dragged him back into the dining room and we continued with the traditional "eat until you are sick" christmas lunch until another cracker was pulled and he ran out of the room again

This time we found him in one of the girls bedrooms, a place he always goes to when we have a thunder storm during the night, apparently its safe for dogs if you hide from thunder under a bed, the same goes for christmas crackers apparently

It was then that we realised that it was the crackers that were doing it to him so we had to desist - does anyone want to pull the remaining five crackers out of the box for us - preferably out of hearing range of one big scare-dy dog who's profession should have been hunting with guns ?

Christmas Day in the Chicken house

If you lived on top of an active volcano then you'd expect disruption from time to time.

If you live in a household of three females, each of which have only the merest trace of the hormone that controls the temper function then you expect disruption all of the time that they are in contact with each other.

Christmas Day is no different.

The seeds were sown on Christmas Eve, Jodie, the youngest, was at her boyfriends house for most of the afternoon with instructions from Suzanne to be home for 7pm. At 6pm she phoned to say that she would be eating at her boyfriends house with his family at 7-ish and that she would get a lift home at 9pm, it seemed innocuous enough, it saved me having to drive across the city to pick her up, it saved us having to feed her, so I agreed.

Amanda, the eldest was also out of the house celebrating Christmas Eve with her friends and so it left just the two of us in the house, I casually informed Suzanne of Jodie's message - and the seeds of anger were sown.

It built up over the next half hour, for what reason I know not, I do not pretend to understand either the mind of a woman or the forces which drive the temper function, for I have no practical experience of either brain function, I simply do not lose my temper for I don't think that I actually have one.

Luckily when Jodie returned home a few minutes after 9pm she decided to retire to her bedroom thus saving the Christmas Eve peace but of course only prolonging the stewing anger and temper-ism for Christmas Day.

We walked on egg shells all through Christmas Day, there was a general sulk in the air with not much conversation coming from the elder female, the two offspring of the elder sensing this and so not ruffling feathers, I made dinner, as is customary I received a present from each daughter but none from wife, and most importantly I found my drawing pen which I have been searching for for weeks.

The explosion occurred during the second episode of Coronation Street later in the evening, over what I know not for my "switch off sensory organs" function tripped in perfectly as soon as the first voice was raised - I do not stand between feuding women.

It was over very quickly, an explosion of two tempers, resulting in both retiring to their bedrooms leaving me with the chocolates, gin and tonic and TV remote control.

I watched "Pulp Fiction" on my own - a fine result then.